Business Communication and English
Business Communication and English tests clear, correct and appropriate communication in letters, memos, emails, reports and summaries, together with English grammar and comprehension. Marks are lost for ambiguity, wrong register and basic sentence errors, so practise editing rather than only memorising formats.
Core rules
- The communication process runs sender, message, channel, receiver and feedback; noise can distort any stage.
- The 7 Cs are clear, concise, concrete, correct, coherent, complete and courteous.
- A formal letter includes sender details, date, recipient, salutation, subject, body, complimentary close and signature.
- A memo normally uses To, From, Date and Subject headings and needs no salutation.
- A report moves from introduction and findings to conclusions and recommendations.
Worked example
Rewrite: "It has come to our attention that the payment which was due on 1 May has not been received by us at the time of writing." A better version is: "We have not received the payment due on 1 May." The original uses 26 words; the revision uses 11. It removes the empty phrase "it has come to our attention", replaces the passive "has not been received by us" with active voice, and keeps the essential facts: payer, amount context and due date.
Traps
-Using "please revert" when "please reply" is meant, or mixing informal chat with formal correspondence.
- Overusing the passive voice until the reader cannot tell who must act.
- Writing a memo with a salutation and complimentary close, which belongs to a letter.
- Making a sentence long enough to contain a comma splice or an ambiguous pronoun.